During the writing of this chapter, one of our clients almost lost a small fortune in business due to the lack of change control. Our client is a small (only five people) insurance broker. One of the brokers, Dave, writes marine insurance, and on a fine cool January day in Florida, he got the break the company was waiting for . . . an order for a policy to insure a $10 million yacht . . . the premium would be a killer. | Change Control and Policy and Workspace Management This chapter discusses workplace management and change control services. In This Chapter Group Policy Overview Creating Policy and Change Management Plans Applying Group Policy What Is Change Control During the writing of this chapter one of our clients almost lost a small fortune in business due to the lack of change control. Our client is a small only five people insurance broker. One of the brokers Dave writes marine insurance and on a fine cool January day in Florida he got the break the company was waiting for . . . an order for a policy to insure a 10 million yacht . . . the premium would be a killer. He returned from the marina shaking and shivering realizing that he was about to write the policy of his career. The commission would be staggering and from this many more deals would flow. You get a name for writing big policies like this. Nothing would stand in his way . . . nothing but his faithful workstation. Dave likes to fiddle with his computer. When he is not looking for insurance business he likes playing around with his desktop settings fonts resolution and more. Dave lives in Control Panel more than his apartment. We had maintained a loose change management policy in this company. In other words we maintained minimal desktop control because Dave was the only wild card and was considered an advanced user. The company had been our client for several years and we had never had an issue with users changing anything that could cause a problem. 374 Part III 4 Active Directory Services On the day that Dave needed to write up his policy his desktop went berserk. He logged into his workstation as usual but when he opened the insurance application the application began to tremble and then the session froze. If you know insurance you know that if you cannot write the policy the client will make another call. Dave was getting ready to jump off the jetty with an anchor around his neck. We jumped in and disabled .
